Redstate

Theory: Republicans who start left then flip when they go to Washington are branded as unreliable, so only two kinds of Republicans get elected to Washington: those who start and STAY left, and those who start and STAY right.

HTML Help Central for Red Staters
Reality: Thompson/Romney Dream: Santorum/Watts.

that disproves your theory but I can't really think of one. I suppose if we back a generation, we can say that Ronald Reagan began life more liberal than he ended up. He was never a leftist but he definitely evolved from some more moderate positions to adopt what we now consider bedrock conservatism.

He stays elected, but he started as a D and now he's an R.

"We should scrap this “comprehensive” immigration bill and the whole debate until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders -- or at least made great headway."
Fred Thompson

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

He's not exactly what you're looking for, but there are lessons learned in this example, too. GOP Sen. Packwood started left, and he stayed left. The only trouble is that when he was accused of nothing worse than accusations about Bill Clinton, his social vote liberal colleagues threw him under the bus. They did not care that he had voted with them on the social issues. He was not a Dem, and so they sent him to the pile.

"We should scrap this “comprehensive” immigration bill and the whole debate until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders -- or at least made great headway."
Fred Thompson

We've elected Republicans from blue states to national office. Reagan is the obvious success story here. But note who he was: a ideological conservative who was a good enough leader to win over an essentially liberal state.

That's not happening this election for two reasons:

* The definition of "conservative" has been ratcheted upward. That's partly because of the bad example of Bush's "compassionate conservatism". It's also partly because of how close we're getting to a federalist-majority Supreme Court. (Reagan would be unacceptable to many pro-lifers if he were running today.)

* Our blue-state Presidential nominees aren't great conservative leaders. They've gotten elected in blue states by fitting in. Giulani is a liberal on several social issues. Romney preferred to bend rather than break. These are not terrible things in these VERY blue states; the Republican party has learned it's better to take a half-loaf there. But when it comes to the Presidency, that half-loaf starts looking a lot less tasty.